Turn Off ACR: Which TV Brands Still Send Traffic

The film has just started and your TV may be sampling the screen and matching it against a database. To turn off ACR you hunt through a privacy menu where each brand uses a different name, and whether it goes quiet depends on whose TV it is.

Should I turn off ACR on my smart TV?

Yes, for most households: automatic content recognition (ACR) samples what your screen shows and matches it against a reference library, brands use the result for advertising, and the opt-out costs a few minutes in the menus. Vizio's Viewing Data page says its OS has built-in ACR and licenses the result for targeted advertising (undated page). Standby draw, priced in our TV electricity cost piece, is another thing a TV does unprompted.

A 2024 Internet Measurement Conference paper from a UCL-led team read vendor documents as a capture every 10 ms on LG and every 500 ms on Samsung: stated intent, not measurement. The authors infer both brands batch samples into periodic uploads, so a quiet network graph proves little, and the volume is modest beside video (see 4K streaming data usage against a home data cap).

Four figures decide most of this: upload rhythm and volume from that paper, the platform count from Northeastern's 2026 study (5,943 experiments on 12 TVs, so one flaky set cannot explain a pattern), and the penalty from TechSpot's report of Texas's December 2025 suits.

Batching is why ACR is hard to catch from the sofa. Dividing upload gap by capture gap gives roughly 1,500 sampled frames per LG upload and about 120 per Samsung upload, our arithmetic, not a measurement. Check the setting; do not trust the router.

Where is the ACR setting on a Samsung, LG or Vizio TV?

It sits in a privacy or system menu under a different name on each brand: Samsung's Viewing Information Services, LG's Live Plus, Vizio's Viewing Data, Sony's Samba Interactive TV, and Roku's Use info from TV inputs. Paths are as reported by Malwarebytes (2 March 2026) and Tom's Guide (30 January 2026), Vizio's from its own page; names shift by model year, so use settings search. Hisense and TCL sets use their platform's path (Roku OS or Google TV).

• Samsung: Settings > Support > Terms & Privacy > Privacy Choices, Viewing Information Services off.
• LG: Settings > All Settings > General > System > Additional Settings, Live Plus off.
• Vizio: All Settings > Privacy & Legal > Viewing Data (older sets: Admin & Privacy).
• Sony: Settings > Privacy (or System), Samba Interactive TV off.
• Roku: Settings > Privacy > Smart TV Experience > Use info from TV inputs off.

Finding the switch is half the job; this side by side of two test programmes is the other.

Read the middle column as evidence about the sets tested, not a guarantee about yours: most ACR traffic is encrypted, so researchers infer from timing and volume.

This settles which sources still send traffic from a Samsung with the switch off: mostly antenna and HDMI, little on free channels, none on Netflix or YouTube. Percentages divide Northeastern's run counts (41 of 60, 18 of 30, 6 of 30).

Worked example: one LG TV, three hours a day of antenna or free-channel viewing, every day (our assumptions). At LG's documented 10 ms capture that is 3 × 3,600 × 100 = 1,080,000 captures a day, about 394 million a year. The upload: 3 h × 4.58 MB × 365 days is 5.0 GB a year. Samsung's documented 500 ms and 0.45 MB an hour give about 8 million captures and 0.5 GB. Swap in your own hours below; estimates, not measurements.

How much does your TV sample and send?Set your evening hours, your TV count and your brand. Upload uses the paper's measured rates; captures use each brand's documented rate.

Your numbers

Antenna or free-channel hours

3.0 h

0.5 h8.0 hTVs in the house

1

13

TV brand

LGSamsung

LG-style upload a year

5.0 GB

Samsung-style upload a year

0.5 GB

Captures a year, your brand

394 million

Upload is 5.0 GB on LG-style or 0.5 GB on Samsung-style: too small for a bill to notice. The 394 million captures behind it are the part to weigh.Reset to the article's exampleSliders need JavaScript. Figures shown are the article's example.Upload: IMC 2024 US antenna readings, LG 4.58 MB an hour, Samsung 0.45 MB (ACR domains summed). Capture rates are vendor documents as read by IMC 2024. Estimates as of November 2026.

Does turning off ACR actually stop the tracking?

On some brands, yes: two independent test programmes saw LG's traffic stop, while Samsung and Vizio kept sending after opt-out, and the studies cannot prove from encrypted traffic what was stored or used.

Here is the dated before and after. In 2024 the paper saw complete silence to every identified ACR domain once Samsung or LG was opted out; in 2026 Northeastern saw Samsung traffic consistent with ACR still flowing. Different sets and methods, so no proof of regression.

Texas's December 2025 suits against five TV makers, per TechSpot, call Samsung's opt-out four or more menus and over 15 clicks against one click to opt in. The National Law Review reported on 11 May 2026 that LG agreed to a clear opt-out after Samsung's earlier deal; Sony, Hisense and TCL were pending. Allegations and settlements, not findings; none says a TV in another state got the new prompt.

Our call: on a Samsung or Vizio, move viewing to a different box, as Northeastern advises; our piece on smart TV software updates versus a streaming stick covers that trade. The old advice to flip the switch and relax is out of date for two big names, and a stick alone is not enough: the TV itself must stay offline.

• Vizio's page says switching Viewing Data off deletes that TV's historical logs; other data, such as Activity Data, may still be collected.
• Even with ACR off, researchers saw Vizio's WatchFree+ expose program titles in unencrypted lookups; no switch covered it.

The decision is per brand: on LG, Sony and Fire TV the switch is enough, on Samsung and Vizio it is not. This week, switch off the setting above, then take a Samsung or Vizio off your Wi-Fi and watch through a stick. That is wrong if you need the TV's own apps; check first that the switch reads off. While you are in settings, motion smoothing for movies versus sports and games is the next call.